The Evening Sun du lieu suivant : Baltimore, Maryland • 51

Aerospace Museum Makes Fancy Out Of Flight country glued to its television sets. A hundred feet away is the monstrous Skylab orbital workshop. It's as big as a three-bedroom house, but by the time it was launched on a gigantic Saturn rocket, America was so blase that the event produced nothing but a collective yawn. The space exhibits also illustrate America's genius for technical polysyllabic circumlocution. The man-on-the-moon diorama features a little device called a Modularized Equipment transporter, which would probably be a wagon if it didn't cost so much, and the Skylab itself has a prominently labeled room called a Waste Management Compartment "Yes, it's the john," a museum of ical admitted.

The museum itself is free, but there's an extra admission event that's worth the 1 1 admission charge. It's a film called "To Fly" and it's projected over something called an IMAX system in theater with a giant screen five stories high and 75 feet wide. A historical tour through America and the history of flight, the film is breathtak-ingly photographed and real enough to make you wish you were wearing a seat belt If you like that kind of thing, don't miss it; if you don't, skip it They don't give out airsick are organized by subject. Each has its own motif, and together they tell the story of flight. Some are serious, some are nostalgic, and some are whimsical.

For example, visitors to the World War I gallery find themselves in a minute re-creation of a muddy airfield near Verdun. There Billy Mitchell's Spad and a captured Fokker D-VII vie for the attention with a bombed-out farmhouse "Ops" headquarters and dingy tents where mannequin pilots spend their off hours shooting the breeze on tape, of course. Not far away it's the Navy's turn, and what better than to be piped aboard the quarterdeck of the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Smithsonian, where a glimpse out the porthole shows the ocean rolling by via rear projection film. Walk past the Wildcat fighter and AD-4 Skyhawk bomber, climb up the ladder, and you'll find yourself on the bridge, where a glimpse out the window puts you in the midddle of the action as the jets take off and land.

Once again, it's on film, the it's almost enough to make you seasick. For the space-minded, there's a unique study in contrasts. Look up and you'll see the Explorer satellite, America's first It's small enough to hold in two hands, but back in 1957 it was enough to keep the I i. x. SI i By Michael J.

Himowitt Washington-The thing that hits you at the National Air and Space Museum is the size of everything. The building itself is monumentalbig enough to hang a DC-3 and a half dozen other planes from the ceiling in one gallery, and big enough for Minuteman, Jupiter-C and V-2 rockets in another, with plenty of elbow room. The budget, too, was monu- -mental $41.4 million, not counting the gifts, such as million dollar planetarium from West Germany. "But you know," said one visitor, "there's a lot of people who'll say that this is what America is all about." That may or may not be true, but the general impression at last week's preview was that the American taxpayers' money for once has been well spent The museum, located on Independence avenue between 4th and 7th streets, opens to the public today with a speech by President Ford. There's supposed to be some scientific hokum whereby the official ribbon will be cut by a signal from the Viking 7 spacecraft on Mars.

Then the curators and officials will brace themselves for the throngs that will make the museum Washington's hottest Bicentennial attraction. The museum itself was 30 years in the making. It was chartered by Congress in 1946 to memorialize the history of aviation, and later, space technology, but it sat on the back burner until 1972, when the winding down of the Vietnam war freed enough money to build it To design the building, the Smithsonian Institution en-ganged Gyo Obata, a St Louis architect Michael Collins, who piloted the Apollo 11 command capsule during the first moon landing, was named director. Mr. Obata designed the museum of pink Tennessee marble to match the facade of the National Gallery of Art across the Mall.

The building's four blocks of marble are linked by airy glass galleries lined with balconies that give visitors two views of the historic aircraft suspended from the ceiling. And there are plenty of airplanes, all lovingly restored by the Smithsonian's experts in Silverhill, Md. The Milestones of Flight Gallery has all the really famous craft, including the Wright flyer and the Spirit of St Louis, both of which languished for decades in the musty upper stratosphere of the. old Smithsonian building; the BeU X-l, first plane to break the sound barrier, and Friendship 7, the Mercury capsule that carried John Glenn around the earth. But the beauty of the museum is less in the artifacts than in the imagination and artistry with which they're displayed.

NASM is more than Just a collection of technological dinosaur bones it's a living environment, and every corner holds another surprise. At the Independence avenue entrance, five-story murals by Robert T. McCall and Eric Sloane sweep the vision up to the Milestones gallery. Inside, the. 23 major exhibits PART OF EXHIBIT Planet of many varieties hang from the ceiling in the soon-to-be-opn National Air and Space Museum, part of Smithsonian Institution in Washington.

Submission vs. Independence Story Of Our Declaration In Weekender Spotlight A fancy takes flight Page 3 Project Getting ready to 4 Trip Landmarks to Dish Meals for July 4 9 Calendar July 4 10, 11 Theater Cedrone, movies, 12-15 Sports Where to go swimming Page 17 Sounds A big musical blast. Page IS Other Features Road Reports -Page 7 Weekend Walker Page 8 Red Letter Days. IS structed its delegates to the Congress not to vote for it. In May, 1776, Congress received copies of the treaties by which King George III had hired more than 12,000 Hessian, mercenaries for.his American war.

That seemed to be the final blow. Shortly thereafter, Richard Henry Lee of Virginia made a motion for independence, and the debate on his resolutions began Saturday, June 8. At the end of the day, it was voted to continue the debate until the following Monday, after which, by a vote of 7 to 5, the whole matter was postponed until July 1 to give all the colonies an opportunity to agree. Samuel Chase and Charles Carroll of Carrollton arrived in Philadelphia from a mission to Canada June 11 and soon left for Maryland to stir up support for independence. Chase, particularly, worked hard to change the Maryland convention's mind, and finally on June 28 he was able to send the news to John Adams in Philadelphia that Maryland would vote unanimously for independence.

On July 3, after the vote, John Adams wrote a letter to his wife. It read: "The second day of July, 1776, will be the most memorable epocha in the history of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated, by succeeding generations, as the great anniversary festival It ought to be commemorated as the Day of Deliverance by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires and illuminations from one end of this continent to the other from this time forward forever more By Josephine Novak The document that came to be known as the "Declaration of Independence" was largely the work of Thomas Jefferson, who had been delegated to prepare it His draft was presented to Congress Friday, June 28, 1776, when it was read and ordered "to lie on the table." On July 2, independence was voted for 12 to 0 with New York abstaining). July 4, the Declaration of Independence was approved "without one dissenting colony." The final draft, signed by John Hancock, Congress president, and Charles Thomson, Congress secretary, was ordered authenticated, printed and "proclaimed in each of the united states." July 19, Congress ordered that "the Declaration passed on the 4th be fairly engrossed on parchment, with the title and style of 'The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of and that the same, when engrossed, be signed by every member of Congress." How did the Declaration of Independence come about? The decision had been agonizing, and it was not until the spring of 1776 that the public debate on independence became intense.

When the Second Continental Congress convened in May, 1775, many delegates still believed in reconciliation with Britain. Events during the winter of 1775-76 began to show that the only alternative to absolute submission was a declaration of independence. Even though Maryland had been governed by a revolutionary convention since 1774, the colony was adamantly opposed to independence! and had in.